Monday, March 27, 2006

Quotes of the Morning: The Good News

“Newspaper headlines have borne much bad and frightening news lately: car bombs in Baghdad, missile fusillades launched at hotels, deadly attacks on U.S. soldiers, Iraqi police and governmental officials, and representatives of the international community. But there is plenty of good news, too, even though it doesn't as often make the papers. And that good news stems from a single irreversible and critical truth: the Iraqi people are free. . . . Real progress is being made on the ground that gives Iraqis hope that life will get steadily better. . . . We have renovated more than 1,500 schools.” -Colin Powell, October 31, 2003 “Yes, real progress is being made. We had already renovated 1,500 schools in Iraq way back in 2003. Why doesn’t the news pay more attention to all of the schools?” -Skippy

"What I was saying is there's more than just terrorist attacks that are taking place in Iraq. There's schools opening, there are hospitals opening. The electricity -- the capacity to deliver electricity to the Iraqi people is back up to pre-war levels. ... I know it's a dangerous place. And I also know our strategy to rout them out -- which is to encourage better intelligence and get more Iraqis involved, and have our strike teams ready to move -- is the right strategy." -George ‘Dubya’ Bush, January 20, 2004 “See.. Schools are opening. Electricity is restored. Why doesn’t the news pay more attention to this kind of thing? Why is the Press so anti-American?” -Skippy

“On Wednesday, armed insurgents burst into the classroom of Khidhir al-Mihallawi, an English teacher at Sajariyah High School, accused him of being an agent for the CIA and Israeli intelligence and beheaded him in front of his students, according to students, fellow instructors and a physician at a local hospital. One teacher, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he feared retaliation from insurgents, said that most students ran from the classroom but that some stayed to watch. Many stopped coming to school after the incident, he said. Another teacher, who said he moved his mathematics class to his home to accommodate frightened students, said Mihallawi had earlier been threatened because he worked as a translator for U.S. forces in Ramadi, a hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency. Mihallawi ‘looked at us just like he was telling us that we do not have to be scared. Even as we were running out of the door, his looks were still telling us that nothing will happen and we do not have to be scared,’ said a student, whose father asked that his name not be used. ‘I heard him screaming for a few seconds, then stop screaming.’" -Washington Post, March 26, 2006

“Hey, that was just one little classroom beheading. It isn’t like this is happening everywhere. Just where we are involved. This isn’t about the schools though. I mean, look at how quickly we had the electricity up to pre-war levels. Why can’t the Press just pay more attention to our successes? Why do they hate America?” -Skippy

“Electricity output has dipped to its lowest point in three years in Iraq, where the desert sun is rising toward another broiling summer and U.S. engineers are winding down their rebuilding of the crippled power grid. The Iraqis, in fact, may have to turn to neighboring Iran to help bail them out of their energy crisis — if not this summer, then in years to come. The overstressed network is producing less than half the electricity needed to meet Iraq's exploding demand. American experts are working hard to shore up the system's weaknesses as 100-degree-plus temperatures approach beginning as early as May, driving up usage of air conditioning, electric fans and refrigeration. If the summer is unusually hot, however, ‘all bets are off,’ said Lt. Col. Otto Busher, an engineer with the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division.” -Associated Press, March 25, 2006

“You know, I’m beginning to think that we haven’t been all that successful in Iraq. It’s like what the Administration says and the real world aren’t meshing up. I wonder why that is?” -Skippy

“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ ... ‘That's not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’” -New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004